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Nestlé Waters is moving forward with its plans to buy a new well in Elora, Ontario, situated in the Great Lakes Basin. The well is currently owned by Middle Brook Water Co. (registered as 1445036 Ontario Inc.). Middle Brook’s current permit allows it to withdraw 1.6 million litres of groundwater per day from the Elora well and expires October 31, 2015.

Five years ago this week, the United Nations adopted a historic resolution recognizing the human rights to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as “essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.” For those of us in the balcony of the General Assembly that day, the atmosphere was tense. A number of powerful countries had lined up to oppose it, and we expected the vote to be close.

“Water is life,” said Pablo Solon, Bolivian ambassador to the UN, who introduced the resolution. He reminded the assembly that people are composed of about two-thirds water and our blood flows like a network of rivers to transport nutrients and energy to our bodies.

On this day five years ago, the United Nations formally recognized the human right to water and sanitation by passing resolution 64/292. Social movements who campaigned for it saw the human right to water and sanitation as a tool in the fight against a global water crisis produced by abuse of the water commons, inequality and social exclusion.

In this final week of Intergovernmental Negotiations on the ‘Post 2015 Development Agenda’, the NGO Mining Working Group and the Blue Planet Project marked the occasion by making a final push to have UN Member States ensure the human right to water and sanitation is explicitly and fully named in the process outcome document.

“We are determined to protect this land for future generations, and in the process do our bit to shut down the toxic fossil fuel infrastructure that threatens all forms of living life on this planet.” - Unist’ot’en camp

I recently returned from the 6th Annual Unist’ot’en Camp where a diversity of people came together to participate in and conduct workshops, continue the construction of the Healing Centre, and discuss how we could lend solidarity to the Unist’ot’en people fighting numerous oil and gas pipelines on their territory.

In B.C., public and media attention has been focused on water pricing and Nestlé’s water takings. In February, the B.C. government released water rates which ranged from $0.02 to $2.25. The rates, which take effect January 1, 2016 when the new Water Sustainability Act comes into force, are the lowest across any of the provinces in Canada.

There has been an overwhelming amount of public backlash against the low rates, particularly with Nestlé only being required to pay $2.25 per million litres, a total of roughly $600 per year for the 265 million litres they draw from a well in Hope.